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[00:01:07] Speaker B: ID the Future, A podcast about Evolution and Intelligent design.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: Welcome to ID the Future. I'm Andrew McDermott, the guy who talks to Intelligent Design scientists to share their research and work with you.
Well, on today's episode I get to once again welcome Dr. Eric Hedin to the podcast. Dr. Hedin is Professor Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy at Ball State University in Indiana. He is author of the book Canceled what Some Atheists Don't Want yout to See. He speaks at universities around the country and writes regularly on the evidence for Intelligent Design at Evolution News and Science today. That'
[email protected] welcome back Dr. Hadin.
[00:01:53] Speaker B: Thank you so much, Andrew. It's great to be here today. Looking forward to talking with you again.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: Well, we're diving into a fascinating and perhaps counterintuitive idea about life itself. We usually think of life as the most natural thing there is. Blooming plants, flowing water, the cycles of nature. But what if that perspective is fundamentally challenged by the very laws of physics that govern our universe?
That's the striking conclusion in your recent article, Life Is the Most Unnatural Thing in the universe. At evolutionnews.org you argue that life isn't just a complex natural phenomenon. It's actually something that appears to defy the most basic tendencies of matter and energy. In other words, life is decidedly unnatural.
Now, we might recall from physics class that the universe and everything in it is governed by four fundamental forces. Gravity and electromagnetism produce long range forces whose effects we can detect in daily life. The other two, the strong and weak nuclear forces, are operating at the subatomic scale. But nevertheless, they're just as crucial to the structure of the universe as the other two forces.
Your first words in the article, Dr. Hadin, are matter is moved by matter.
Tell us how matter, influenced by these fundamental forces, forms every structure of the universe.
[00:03:13] Speaker B: Well, whether we're talking about galaxies or stars, planets, moons, or mountains on the Earth, all of these were formed by interactions between matter. The force of one particle of matter pulling on another particle of matter. And we know that matter produces gravity, an attractive force which is, throughout the universe, the dominant force that sculpts the large scale structure of the universe.
And then charged particles of matter produce electric forces that either push or pull each other along a line connecting their centers.
And this force is the prime mover for all molecular interactions, that electric force.
And scientists have a accurate enough a quantifiable understanding of these forces that allows us to even computationally predict the properties of structures that are as different from one another as stars and molecules.
Just using our understanding of forces, we can actually predict how these structures might look given certain initial conditions.
Now, that's going to be something that's different when we consider living things. We'll get to that in a minute.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: Now, the laws of nature governing matter are unintelligent. They follow simple rules. Mass attracts mass by gravity. And the cumulative direction of complex atomic interactions inexorably tends to the lowest available potential energy state, a gradual running down to an uninteresting equilibrium, as you put it in your article.
So why are we not all just lumps on the floor? To help convey this seeming paradox, you use the analogy of a ballerina. Can you share that with us and how it can help us understand the active, creative state that we humans often find ourselves in?
[00:05:13] Speaker B: Sure. Well, when I was thinking about this, how, you know, just in the natural world, matter attracts matter, and that produces things like stars, even. But then you think of living things, and a ballerina came to mind.
Think of the flowing, graceful, artistically balanced movements in a ballet.
But according to someone who holds a materialistic worldview, all that movement must be ascribed to what nature can provide. Nothing more than matter moving matter by the actions of the electric or even the gravitational force.
And yet, based on all we know of the physics of interactions between matter, there are laws that suggest our universe cannot produce the complex functional structure known as a ballerina. I hope if any ballerina is listening, they won't take offense at simply being called a complex functional structure. But in a very basic sense, that's what she is.
Nor could the fundamental Forces of nature be used to predict the movements performed by the ballerina in a ballet. So all living things, from amoebas to human beings, temporarily, and only temporarily, avoid the lump of dirt equilibrium end state.
By metabolizing environmental energy, we take in food and convert it to chemical energy, or sometimes plants use solar energy or thermal energy. And we can convert this into movement with a certain amount of waste product of heat. But even though nature demonstrates matter undergoing movement, you know, think of a volcano erupting or wind, there's not a specificity to it, there's no purpose to it, there's no design to it. So there is this vast difference between what we see in living things and what we see in the non living universe.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: Interesting. Well, materialism is the belief that all life boils down to only matter and energy, nothing more, nothing less. So materialists are going to look at the dancing ballerina and say that every movement of the dance is initiated by the intermolecular forces within the muscles of the ballerina. Which is all true. But it's not the answer to why we have a dance, why we have a ballerina at all, is it?
[00:07:51] Speaker B: Not at all. And as I just mentioned, although within nature we see that the forces of nature can produce the movement of matter, basically matter moves according to simple rules.
For example, within physics, we teach that the movement of matter obeys the principles of the conservation of energy and momentum. These are first year physics concepts.
And there's always, with matter that's just following the laws of nature, an inexorable tendency towards the lowest available potential energy state.
That's why when rain, say, falls on a mountain, it just runs downhill.
It's water, which is matter moving to the gravitational state, that is the lowest energy state, namely to the lowest elevation.
And that's just what nature does. Which is why I suggested that apart from life, an equivalent amount of matter to a ballerina would simply lie like a lump on the floor and there would be no dance, let alone a ballerina.
[00:09:07] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, you describe life as a distant detour from the direct path to dirt and argue that this defies the universal principle that natural processes take the shortest possible path to equilibrium.
So what are some of the key molecular mechanisms going on within living systems that enable us to have this detour?
[00:09:28] Speaker B: Well, certainly there is, as we mentioned, this metabolism of environmental energy into movement with a certain amount of kind of leftover energy produced as heat. But the difference is that the living thing, whether we're talking about a ballerina or a butterfly, is not taking the Shortest, most direct pathway to the lowest potential energy equilibrium state. The butterfly flies up and moves around and you know, certain butterflies move from North America down to a winter resting breeding grounds in Mexico and back again. And people move all over the place and build things that are far detours, as I've said, from the lowest equilibrium energy state.
And this is a violation of what we would say is just undirected forces of nature.
It's different than what we see in any other sphere as we study nature.
And I don't want us to make, I guess, the mistake of assuming that, well, there's something spooky going on with a living thing that cannot be explained.
Now, that there may be, you know, at some ultimate level, but you could build a robot that could perform some of the same movements as a living being.
And such things have been done.
But the key is you could build a robot or a team of engineers, more exactly could build a robot. Nature could not build a robot. It could not provide the software to program it to engage all of its mechanisms to perform anything like a dance.
Nature can't do that because there are too many other ways towards equilibrium that it would rather take than the far detour of producing a robot that's going to do a dance for a number of years. Nature would just more likely take that equivalent amount of matter and let it rest on the floor and turn to dust.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: How do you see, what's your estimation of how you see these mechanisms and living things challenging the idea that life could arise solely through these shortest path equilibrium seeking, unguided natural processes?
[00:12:08] Speaker B: Well, to challenge this idea we, we have to think again about an example.
The ballerina walks up on stage, performs a dance with graceful movements, jumps, pirouettes in time to music.
It's not just random.
And if you again looked at this from a purely materialistic worldview, the amount of matter that composes the ballerina is doing something that no lump of matter has any business doing within nature. The same could be said about the movements of any living thing. I mentioned butterflies, but just think of any living thing. What they're doing is not what could be described as the essence of matter. Moving matter through the forces of nature, which is a quick relaxation to, to the lowest energy state. So again, there's two things that come into our argument here. One is the extremely complex specific functional mechanism of the living organism. Creating that in itself represents a far detour from any sort of equilibrium state.
And so therefore nature would avoid it. But once we look at then what is the living thing doing that also in itself, the movements themselves are unexplainable detours from the point of view of naturalism.
[00:13:34] Speaker A: Now, in a footnote to the article, you refer to something known as statistical fluctuations or variability. You state that an appeal to this as the source of new biological information flatly contradicts the physics of statistical mechanics. Can you elaborate on that just a little bit?
[00:13:53] Speaker B: Well, yes, and thank you for asking about that. I included this as a footnote. It's a little more technical, but I felt it was important to address because sometimes those who want to argue for a purely natural origin of life will point to certain phenomenon within nature that seem to be what we would call statistical fluctuations that veer away from the ground state equilibrium.
And you might point to something like a whirlpool as water runs down a drain, or a tornado, or even a volcanic eruption, or the froth at the bottom of a waterfall. They all involve gradients of matter, different pressures, different temperatures.
And some have suggested that, well, these are slight departures from equilibrium states. So look, nature can do this.
Well, yes, but what's the difference between a tornado and a ballerina?
I mean, just very broadly speaking, although the tornado has sort of a gross overall structure to it, you know, a cylindrical conical shape with movement in roughly a circular fashion.
So on the macroscopic scale it has a form, but there is no internal specified complexity.
You could rearrange the molecules that make up the air that the tornado is made of in innumerable different ways and it would still be a tornado, it wouldn't matter. But just try that with the ballerina, try rearranging her internal molecular structure and you immediately have the end of a living organism again to put it in a very non personal form.
So statistical fluctuations never produce anything interesting in terms of the topic of formation of life.
Some may think, oh, these are interesting, but they are irrelevant compared to the specified complexity of living things.
And there's thermal physics that can prove that they will never amount to anything.
[00:16:37] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, and even the most avid storm chaser, tornado chaser, you know, might, might say, hey, I like tornadoes, I think they're beautiful. But, but we understand what you're saying. There's a vast difference between, you know, a tornado and the complex, you know, living organisms that we see, including ourselves.
And that cannot be denied.
Well, one of the conclusions you draw for the unnatural qualities of life is that only an intelligent designer can orchestrate the miraculous detour, that of matter into the functional forms required for living things.
So what specific characteristics or complexities of life based on Your scientific understanding as a physicist lead you to conclude that life is the product of design rather than an undirected process.
[00:17:24] Speaker B: I think this is the million dollar question.
We're questioning whether life can be described as, as a natural phenomenon, or is life the most unnatural thing in the universe, something that nature, undirected, not guided by any intelligence, would be able to create.
So that's the question.
And why would I conclude that it's the result of intelligent design?
I've already talked about the specified complexity of living things.
This represents an outcome that is too unlikely to be ascribed to pure random chance of any kind. Yet it cannot be following any natural law either, because natural laws lead to predictable results and life at the biochemical level is exceedingly unpredictable. Meaning you can't start with conditions in, say, the early Earth, before there was life, and predict, based on chemistry and interactions between molecules, that life would arise. Living things require countless complex functional biomolecules. Even one of them is beyond nature's ability to produce within this limited time and space of our universe. But then you need a control system to make them dance, to put it simply.
So according to naturalism, there is no control system. We just have forces that push or pull, and that's all. Now, again, I want to just emphasize at the end here that we're so surrounded by living things that it's very tempting to us to view living things, whether plants or flowers or animals or ourselves, and say, what could be more natural than that?
Or that's just the way nature is, it produces life.
But we're making a mistake here. We're in examining the question of whether life is natural. We can't point to life as exhibit A. Life is the question.
We can't point to it and say it's also the answer. We need to look at the rest of nature and ask, can it produce this marvelous phenomenon known as life? And based on the study of nature, I would say no.
And I think that there's a lot of solid physics that agrees with that conclusion. When we restrict our observations to the non living universe, everything we see argues positively against nature's ability to produce life without guidance.
[00:20:13] Speaker A: Some great points there. Well, you call this detour that we can take to push back on these forces of nature temporary, which refers to the end of bodily movement or death. You put it very eloquently in your article. The exuberant detour we call life has allowed us innumerable conquests over the relentless pool of nature back to equilibrium. But our most enduring rearrangements of matter into unnatural structural forms, whether the pyramids or battleships or our own bones will eventually return to amorphous dust.
And you know, for the materialist, that's the end of the story. But if you believe that life is the product of Intelligent design, bodily death is not the end. You refer to a new book by neuroscientist Dr. Michael Egnor, co authored with Denise O' Leary, called the Immortal Mind that makes a scientific case for the existence of the soul and the immortality of the mind. I know you likely haven't read Dr. Agnor's book yet, but you are aware, I'm sure, of some of the arguments he's been making and evolution news just about these topics. After a long career in neurosurgery, why do the arguments for Intelligent design give you confidence in the immortality of life?
[00:21:25] Speaker B: Well, this is something that really touches on our, our personality as human beings.
There's many lines of evidence that would point to the immortality of life.
And I am looking forward to reading this new book by Dr. Egnor and O' Leary when it comes out and I get a copy. But the point that I would simply make based on this topic we're discussing today is that if life itself exists and we conclude from our study and understanding of nature that it must have had a transcendent origin, something bringing life into existence and sustaining it that is beyond the space time fabric of our universe, then I think it can also be a valid hope, a rational hope for us to believe that this same source of our life can sustain our lives beyond the physical death of our bodies.
I believe that this is consistent with the teachings in the Judeo Christian tradition. There is a verse I reference from the Bible in my article saying that God is not the God of the dead, but of the living and that all live to Him.
And so I think that even what we're discovering in our study of nature brings support to that truth.
[00:23:02] Speaker A: Well, speaking of books, you have a book of your own cancelled what some atheists don't want you to see.
And tell us a little bit about what you cover in this book that might be relevant to the topic and just generally to the arguments for intelligent design.
[00:23:19] Speaker B: Well, certainly I present a wide range of topics that point to intelligent design.
Everything from the finely tuned interactions between matter that led to this particular universe of galaxies, stars, planets.
I mean, I guess we just briefly mentioned them in this interview here. But there's a enormous range of finely tuned physical laws that allow galaxies, stars and planet Earth to form in the first place. But then I devote a whole chapter in my book to the topic of life and approach it from information theory, which looks at the kind of unnatural aspects of life, how complex it is in the realm of specified complex information that cannot be attained by natural causes. Then I end the book by looking at our significance as humans. If, again, we're not just the outcome of a long and meaningless history of the physical universe, but if we were intentionally designed by a transcendent source of life that we would call God, then I believe that our lives have significance and that we were designed on purpose for relationship, in fact, with our Creator.
[00:24:48] Speaker A: Well, when I first came across this article we're discussing of yours, I. I thought, gee, this would make for a nice little chat, you know, just to open up some of these ideas and share them.
It's a great reminder of the natural forces that we're regularly detouring from as we live our very unnatural lives.
So really appreciate your time putting the article together and getting it out there and being able to chat about it today.
[00:25:12] Speaker B: Well, thank you very much. It's been a real pleasure to talk with you again today.
[00:25:17] Speaker A: Well, in the show notes for this episode, I'll include a link to Dr. Hedin's book canceled Science, as well as a fun animated video telling some of his story. He's got quite the story you're going to want to delve into.
To read more of his work, you can also hop on to evolutionnews.org click the writers tab near the top and just click on his name.
So thank you for joining us. I'm Andrew McDermott for ID the Future. This is Dr. Eric Hadib. Thank you again.
[00:25:46] Speaker B: ID the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
